Ends tomorrow

The Lower Mainland’s newest online marketplace will open on Monday, April 28, when LikeItBuyItVancouver.com begins previewing a limited-time sale of everything from household goods to consumer electronics to cruises, travel, cars, gift cards and personal services.

Pete McMartin: Fly the friendly skies? This passenger isn’t buying it

Pete McMartin wonders why flying has become such hard work.

Photograph by: Illustration by Roger Watanabe
, Vancouver Sun

There are times flying Air Canada when you can’t seem to escape the company’s reminder it was voted the best airline in North America by the Skytrax 2013 Airline Awards, whatever they are. On a trip to New York recently, I must have heard this a half-dozen times.

For the company, the award was a public relations coup.

For the passenger in seat 33D — without enough leg room to reach down and untie his shoelaces, whose headache was made worse by a seatback TV screen too close to focus on, who refused to surrender his Visa card for a limp $7 chicken wrap and $6.50 for a hobbit’s pour of something that very well could have been wine — those constant reminders of We’re Number One began to seem like a neurotic’s overcompensation that not only was the airline trying to convince its customers of its stature, but itself.

I couldn’t help but think that behind those prideful announcements was an agog but pleasantly surprised corporate entity that had found the golden ticket and was wondering to itself: “Can you believe it?!” And I could not help but think to myself: “No.”

I am being a bit unfair. I think. Travel can be messy. Things happen. And among the galaxy of airlines, Air Canada, in my experience, may not be the brightest of stars — I’ve found Cathay, KLM, British Airways and Lufthansa to be light years beyond it in terms of service — but neither is it the dimmest.

Among my priorities when it comes to flying, The Edibility of Chicken Wraps comes in well behind Non-Crashing, and so far, in that regard, I am perfectly satisfied with Air Canada’s performance. (I should be knocking on wood as I write this.)

But that recent trip to New York, which by no means was the most hellish flying I have ever done, brought back to mind that question I have so often asked myself: Why has flying become so unpleasant?

That question encompasses more than just the airlines. It includes badly trained and poorly paid security personnel, needlessly surly Customs officers, circus-like baggage handling, awful airport design, an ever-growing list of fees — the whole exhausting, enervating schmeer that flying is today. While many, many people connected to the airline business are a pleasure to deal with, there seems to be a growing erosion of common sense and courtesy.

For instance:

In Vancouver, when we checked in, we asked for some baggage identification tags. Could the Air Canada attendant show us where they were? She says, curtly, “Over there,” and waves at an alcove opposite the Air Canada area. We go to the alcove. There are no identification tags. There is nothing. She says, ‘Oh, they must have moved them,’ but she doesn’t say where. We queue up and, while we wait, watch her herd customers into a line with the impatience of a cowboy prodding heifers into a branding chute.

We land in Toronto. Pearson International is a design nightmare: long walks to connections, a multitude of levels. At one point, several of us almost walked out of the terminal because there was no signage directing passengers to the connecting gates.

Air Canada’s baggage system had broken down, so we had to retrieve our bags that normally would have been checked through to New York, and lug them through the terminal. Chaos. The terminal resembled the fall of Saigon.

Hundreds of people were queued up to re-check their bags. At Customs, the lines were made worse because half the Nexus terminals were broken. (“They usually are,” the repairman working on one said.)

Because the Nexus system was different than the one used in Vancouver, the husband of one couple in our group inadvertently put his fingerprints on his wife’s pass. They were hauled off to a Customs office where they were interrogated. The couple was in their 70s. The husband was a former RCMP officer. They were held for a half-hour by a Customs officer the husband would later describe as “lackadaisical” and “officious.”

They were finally released and ran to the gate, only to find out that boarding had ended and the plane was preparing to leave the gate.

They would have missed our flight except for the fact that our tour director stayed behind at the gate and pleaded with the Air Canada check-in attendants to let them board. (And kudos to those attendants for letting them do so.) We took off seconds later.

What else?

On our return flight, a Customs officer in Toronto, who looked to be just out of high school, asked me, after I had to redo my pass through the Nexus lane, “Where did you get your Nexus training?” She didn’t want an answer, she just wanted to register her disdain. Then she rolled her eyes as I walked away.

At New York’s LaGuardia Airport, our Air Canada check-in attendant announced to those waiting in line she was going on lunch break, leaving our tour group standing there. Her replacement arrived 10 minutes later. It took 40 minutes for our group to get checked through to their gate. I can confidently report that the overriding mood of our group was exasperation verging on violence.

When I approached the Air Canada information desk to make a complaint, I was handed a business card. It had a phone number on it.

When I phoned, I heard a high whine on the other end of the line. It was a fax number. If I wanted to make a complaint, the card explained, I would have to do so by letter or email — as opposed to talking to a real live human being.

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.

Latest updates

Former 2010 Olympics CEO John Furlong has dropped a defamation lawsuit against the journalist who wrote a story alleging he was verbally and physically rough on native students when he was a young teacher in Northern B.C. decades ago.

A new survey ranks Vancouver as the busiest city in Canada when it comes to traffic. The results, published in TomTom’s fifth annual Traffic Index, looks at 218 cities across the globe and ranks them based on how congested their roads can be during peak travel times throughout the day.